Norwalk-based Spinnaker Real Estate Partners’ new Brim & Crown redevelopment combined industrial-chic office space and 189 loft-style apartments steps from the East Norwalk station on Metro-North. Photo courtesy of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners

A Manhattan-based solar company relocated to the new Brim & Crown development in East Norwalk as executives sought to work closer to their Fairfield County homes and avoid commuting into the city during COVID-19.

GameChange Solar leased 14,000 square feet for a new headquarters, filling up the office portion of the project which also includes 189 apartments.

“It was an instant attraction to the culture of the space,” said Brad Soules, a director at Newmark Knight Frank who represented GameChange Solar in the lease negotiations.

The reception to Brim & Crown hints at the staying power of transit-oriented development even during a pandemic-driven office leasing slump. Clay Fowler, CEO of Norwalk-based developer Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, says the long-term business plan for Brim & Crown relies not on COVID-driven migration, but creating a transit-friendly hub with industrial-inspired office space and loft-style living. The firm specializes in multifamily development near Metro-North stations from New Haven to Stamford, along with two current projects in Hartford.

The 80,000-square-foot building at 230 East Ave. was constructed as a hat factory and later converted into an outlet mall. In its most recent incarnation, it housed office space for a marketing company. Spinnaker acquired the property from a DLC Management, a Westchester retail developer, in 2018. Norwalk officials asked the new owners to apply their transit-oriented development skills to coordinate their project with planned improvements at the neighboring East Norwalk station.

The city has made East Norwalk a focus of its economic development strategy. A planning study released in April recommends creation of a TOD village zone with increases in density and rezoning for additional housing, including units on upper floors above commercial space.

The East Norwalk station has a relatively modest ridership, with approximately 700 weekday boardings according to 2017 data. And Metro-North ridership has dropped more than 70 percent during the pandemic, according to Metropolitan Transit Authority data, so transit officials have warned of potential deep service cuts to close a $12 billion system-wide budget gap.

Fowler predicts the effects will be short-lived and transit-oriented developments will continue to attract rent premiums post-COVID.

“The trains will come back. Anything that we built near train stations are good solid locations, although they’re temporarily impinged by COVID,” he said.

The project includes 42 lofts in a redeveloped early-20th-century structure known as the Brim building, and another 147 apartments in the new 5-story Crown building on the former parking lot. The 42-unit complex is 100-percent leased and the second building is in lease-up advertising rents starting from $1,775 for studios. Property-wide rents average $2.60 per square foot, Fowler said.

Commercial Leasing Exceeds Expectations

Fairfield County commercial real estate has seen few benefits from the pandemic, even as many Manhattan office towers remain largely unoccupied. An August survey by the Partnership for New York City found that only 8 percent of workers had returned to city office buildings. Both downtown and suburban companies are delaying real estate decisions, with the Fairfield County office market recording 168,000 square feet of negative absorption in the third quarter according to CBRE data.

Against that sluggish backdrop, the pace of leasing for the 40,000 square feet of office space at Brim & Crown came as a surprise to Fowler. Norwalk-based Beinfield Architecture designed the updates to the mushroom-column-reinforced concrete building and tapped Art of Jahmane, a Norwalk studio, to add graffiti-style graphics to the interior. Tenants have access to a grill-equipped roof deck and club room.

HealthPrize Technologies, which makes patient apps for life science companies, and the nonprofit Newman’s Own Foundation signed the first two leases, and GameChange committed to the remainder of the space in October.

Asking rents averaged in the mid-$20 per square foot range on a triple-net basis, Fowler said, a significant discount to similar transit-oriented properties in competing markets such as Stamford.

GameChange Solar executives seriously considered properties in Wilton, Stamford and Norwalk before settling on Brim & Crown for their 100-employee workforce, Newmark’s Soules said.

“Most of the loft-style office space with proximity to the train is attractive to folks that are here now or folks coming out of the city: something with a little character as opposed to the commodity vanilla office space,” Soules said. “When you’re on a tour and you see these cool office spaces, they stick out as opposed to a Plain Jane office.”